Tag Archives: canadian history

Trading card photo of Gordie Howe as a member of the Detroit Red Wings. These cards were printed on the backs of Chex cereal boxes in the US and Canada from 1963 to 1965. Those collecting the cards cut them from the back of the boxes.

Gordie Howe, a great Canadian hockey legend, known for, among other feats, for his Hat Trick.

Here are a few facts:

* Born on March 31, 1928 in Floral, Saskatchewan.

* Died on June 10, 2016 in Toledo, Ohio at the age of 88.

* He was inducted in the Hockey Hall of Fame in 1972.

* He was ambidextrous.

* Played from 1946-1971 and 1973-1980.

* He was nicknamed Mr. Hockey.

* A 23-time NHL All-Star, he held many of the sport’s scoring records until they were broken in the 1980s by Wayne Gretzky. He continues to hold NHL records for most games and seasons played.

* He won the Stanley Cup with the Red Wings four times, won six Hart Trophies as the league’s most valuable player, and won six Art Ross Trophies as the leading scorer.

* Howe was most famous for his scoring prowess, physical stamina and career longevity. He is the only player to have competed in the NHL In five different decades (1940s through 1980s). Although he only accomplished the task twice in his own career, he became the namesake of the “Gordie Howe hat trick”: a goal, an assist and a fight in the same game. He was the inaugural recipient of the NHL Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008.

* He was slightly dyslexic growing up, however, he was physically beyond his years at an early age. Already six feet tall in his mid-teens, doctors feared a calcium deficiency and encouraged him to strengthen his spine with chin-ups. He started playing organised hockey at eight years old. Howe quit school during the Depression to work In construction with his father, then left Saskatoon at sixteen to pursue his hockey career.

* Howe was an ambidextrous player, one of just a few skaters able to use the straight sticks of his era to shoot either left or right-handed.

* He experienced his first taste of professional hockey at age 15 in 1943 when he was invited by the New York Rangers to their training camp held at “The Amphitheatre” in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He played so well that the Rangers wanted Howe to sign a “C” form which would have given that club his NHL rights and to play that year at Notre Dame, a Catholic school in Wilcox, Saskatchewan, which had a reputation for discovering good hockey players. Howe wanted to go back home to play hockey with his friends, and declined the Rangers’ offer and returned to Saskatoon.

Dr. Joseph MacInnis is a Canadian physician, author, underwater diver and aquanaut. He was born on March 2, 1937 in Barrie, Ontario.

He first learned to scuba dive in 1954, at the age of 17.

He earned his MD from the University of Toronto and did his internship at the Toronto General Hospital. It was during his internship that he came across John McGean, a tunnel construction worker who came in suffering from decompression sickness. This was the beginning of his lifetime passion in diving medicine and studying the effects that undersea exploration has on their psyche and physiology. He transferred McGean to a pressure chamber in Buffalo, New York. The patient fully recovered.

Between 1970 to 1974, MacInnis led four major scientific diving expeditions to Resolute Bay 965 kilometers (600 miles) north of the Arctic Circle.

On the third expedition, MacInnis established the first polar dive station, “Sub-Igloo.” This led to the very first filming of Harp seals and Bowhead, Narwhal and Beluga whales.

His team also discovered the remains of the HMS Breadalbane in the Northwest Passage, at 104 meters beneath the surface. The British ship sunk in 1835, crushed by ice.

He was heavily involved in the 1985 exploration of the Titanic. In 1991 he co-led a team in the filming of the IMAX movie of the fated ship.

Yesterday I was approached by a nice young woman requesting a monthly donation to the Ottawa Humane Society. She told me of a story of a dog named Breezy. Though I’m sure there are stories like this everywhere, this one was in my city and I hadn’t heard of it. It doesn’t start happy at all, but there is a happy ending.

Stephen Helfer, 24, owned a Labrador-shepherd mix dog named Breezy. “Helfer’s attack with a rake and a shovel left Breezy with skull fractures and a swollen brain. Rescuers found her in a garbage bin, where Helfer had tossed her to die.” (Quote from the Ottawa Citizen newspaper article of June 16, 2014. See link below.) Several calls came in from people who saw the attack. It wasn’t long before he was rescued and treated for his injuries.

Helfer was given 1-1/2 credit for his 8 months of pre-trial custody, leaving a sentence of 361 days, he was also prohibited from owning animals for 25 years. This sentence is the longest ever seen in Ottawa and maybe even in Canada’s history for animal cruelty,

A couple in Gatineau (Quebec), John and Sheila, adopted Breezy. He is doing very well and is happy in his new home. You can witness this in the videos below. I don’t know who’s luckier, Breezy or John & Sheila. But I am happy that I heard the good ending, and not followed it through the stages. But I do want to commend the Ottawa Humane Society, Leanne Cusak, John, Sheila, Agent Hammond, the Rescue and Investigation Services and everyone else who helped turn this into a happy ending.

Read more at the Ottawa Citizen newspaper’s article and another at CBC Ottawa News. If you would like to donate to the Ottawa Humane Society, you can go to their site here.

Few countries in the world have a younger and better educated Prime Minister than the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. This well educated young man is the second youngest Prime Minister of Canada, second only to Joe Clark. And he is the first elected Prime Minister who is the child of a previous elected Prime Minister. He is the son of Pierre Trudeau, former Prime Minister of Canada. He has performed some amazing feats, one of which was to lead his Liberal party from third place (by the number of seats) to first place, thus winning a landslide victory. He had the largest increment in number of seats of any party in Canadian history. It is not surprising, then, that Forbes Magazine ranks him among the most powerful persons in the world. He stands 69th in that list.

Justin Trudeau was born Christmas eve in 1971, while his father was still in office. Despite repeated protests from his wife, Pierre Trudeau was permitted into the delivery room. Little did they know that their son would follow in his father’s footsteps. In fact, in April 1972, American President Nixon raised a toast “Tonight, we’ll dispense with formalities. I’d like to toast the future prime minister of Canada — to Justin Pierre Trudeau.” The Prime Minister noted that should this come true, he would want his son to have “the grace and skill of the President” (Nixon). In April 1972, Nixon gave a champagne toast during a buffet meal. His remarks have become known as the Nixon prophecy. “Tonight, we’ll dispense with formalities. I’d like to toast the future prime minister of Canada — to Justin Pierre Trudeau.”

In 2009, Trudeau spoke of his parent’s marriage. “They loved each other incredibly, passionately, completely. But there was 30 years between them and my Mom never was an equal partner in what encompassed my father’s life, his duty, his country.”

Since childhood, Justin was given the “normal” treatment, to make sure that he was raised without any unreasonable privileges. He was sent to a public school, and used the school bus (as opposed to a limousine) to his school.

Later in life, Justin Trudeau has used his public status to promote various causes. For instance, he and his family, started the Kokanee Glacier Alpine Campaign for winter sports safety in 2000, two years after his brother, Michel Trudeau, died in an avalanche during a ski trip.

In 2002, Trudeau criticized the British Columbia’s decision to suspend its funding for a public avalanche warning system.

In 2005, Trudeau fought against a proposed $100 million zinc mine that he argued would poison the Nahanni River, a United Nations World Heritage Site in the Northwest Territories.

He became involved with the Liberal Party from a young age, and that involvement progressed over the years. He won the party’s nomination in 2007, and in 2015, he led his party to win the elections in one of the biggest upsets in the Canadian political history. The rest, so far, is history.
For a good laugh, just watch the short video below. Some Americans’ thought on who Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is.

The “Regina Cyclone” hit the town of Regina, Canada, on June the 30th of 1912 and has since been seen as one of the most destructive tornadoes ever to hit Canada. Hitting an estimated wind speed of 800 kilometres an hour the tornado had quite an impact on people’s lives.

Here are some statistics on the impact caused by the tornado:

Wind speed of 800 km/h

Caused $1,200,000 in damage costs (today that would be around $485 million dollars)

More than 2,500 people’s homes were destroyed and were homeless afterwards

28 people died due to the tornado

The tornado traveled over 12 kilometres before dissipating

It took nearly 40 years to repay all the debt that had built up from rebuilding costs

All of these show just the devastating impact that the tornado had on not only the people, but the financial status of the country!

Pictures taken after the cyclone had dissipated show that the downtown area of Regina had the worst damage compared to the rest of the city.

In the 1860s, the British colonies were facing various issues. One resolution for each one of these was that the colonies come together to form one country. These are the problems that brought about Confederation:

The Province of Canada was made of a lot of people and was later made into the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. The government of the Province of Canada did not run smoothly because the English-speaking and French-speaking halves each had different ideas about how things should be run. Leaders from both areas of the province decided that joining other colonies might help solve their own political problems.

In order for their economies to do well, the colonies needed to be able to sell their goods to other markets. One solution was to bring all the colonies together.

Since America had fought Britain to gain its independence, the relationship between British North America and the United States had never been stable. Many Americans wanted to take over all of what is now Canada.

Britain didn’t want to have to pay for the cost of defending its colonies. Hence, it decided to encourage the colonies to amalgamate, because the United States would be less likely to attack Canada if it were a self-governing country in lieu of separate colonies of Britain. This fear of the U.S. helped to strengthen the decision for Confederation.

Leaders from New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island had actually already begun discussing the idea of signing up for a Marine union and had also planned for a meeting. The political leaders from the Province of Canada asked if they could come to their conference to recommend a bigger union of all the British North American colonies. The Maritime colonies were given invitations and so started the quest of Confederation.

Here’s a quick quiz to test your knowledge of Canada. Don’t worry, the answers are further down on the post. If you don’t want to quiz yourself, just learn some trivia, it’s all here! Have fun, that’s all I ask.

8. When did Canadian John R. Connon patent the first panoramic camera in the world?
a) 1788
b) 1800
c) 1888

Answers:1. b) Angel Peak, British Columbia at 6,858 m. The second is Mount Logan, Yukon at 5,959 m.2. a) Mackenzie, Northwest Territories at 4,240 km. The second is St. Lawrence, Quebec/Ontario at 3,060 km.3. a) North Pelham, Ontario. It is estimated to be approx. 500 years old and is 30.5 m tall!4. b) Benjamin Franklin. He was joint deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753.5. c) Hartland, New Brunswick at 391 m it is the longest covered bridge on Earth!6. a) Goderich, Ontario where it’s the world’s largest salt mine. Sifto extracts 6,577,089 tonnes a year.7. a) Winnipeg, Manitoba on June 21, 1959 with the number 999. Most of Canada’s 911 was adopted on June 22, 1975.8. c) 1888. Even if you find earlier patents, Connon’s was the first to actually capture vistas of up to 360 degrees in a single exposure.